“Then please don’t. When you asked us to come here, you didn’t say we’d be on lockdown.”
“I don’t mean for it to seem that way. But our choices over the coming days and weeks will mean the difference between life and death.” “It’s not like my boys can sit inside and play Xbox all day. They need something to do.”
“I have a pool table upstairs,” said Thomas. “And board games.”
“I hate board games,” said Brandon. “Especially backgammon.”
“Me too,” said Ben. “If we can’t play Xbox do you at least have Nintendo Switch? That runs on batteries.”
Seth laughed. “Let’s go upstairs, boys. We can play Monopoly.”
“What’s Monopoly?” asked Ben.
“It’s a game where you buy streets and houses and charge people money when they stay there.”
“What kind of game is that?”
“The way to win is to own all the property so you can drive up the cost of living and tell everyone what to do.”
Skylar caught Seth’s eyes and smiled at him. She liked that analogy, comparing their absurd living conditions to a board game. Maybe Seth wasn’t as provincial as he seemed. Maybe he would prove to be an ally here.
After Seth and the boys disappeared up the stairs, Thomas collapsed into a chair across the table from her.
“I’m not an asshole,” he said in a low voice. “I’m just trying to keep everyone safe.”
“You’re living in fantasy world,” Skylar said. “You can’t lock a bunch of strangers in your house and expect everyone outside to fend for themselves. Let’s go talk to your neighbors. Get everyone together and come up with a plan to get through this. Like long term.”
“I don’t know my neighbors. There isn’t enough food. We already talked about this.”
In the living room, Natalie stood and looked briefly in their direction. Skylar wondered if she was upset with someone here or missing family she had left behind or in shock. Natalie walked toward the kitchen but then veered into the hall and out of sight.
“I thought you were a nicer person,” Skylar said. “I thought you were more empathetic.”
“No matter what I do it will be the wrong thing.”
“As if it’s up to you who lives and dies. As if you’re God.”
“I’m not the only person who prepared. There’s a whole culture of people who expected something like this to happen, and the prevailing opinion has always been to get the hell away from everyone else so they don’t take you down with them.”
“But even wild animals cooperate, and we humans are self-aware, for heaven’s sake. We can make complex decisions. And all you care about is your own stomach.”
“You can’t focus on the philosophical if you don’t satisfy the biological.”
“Maybe so,” Skylar said. “But would you really let the light go out forever because you’re too selfish to share?”
“The lights are already out.”
“That’s not the kind of light I mean,” Skylar said, and got up to leave.
TWENTY-ONE
Natalie’s silence was nothing she consciously decided, but when every moment in this house was worse than the one before, what was there to say? The more she withdrew, the less necessary it felt to interact with the exterior world, and by now she felt almost no desire to speak at all.
The first problem was her husband’s obsession with Skylar. There was a reason Life… Unexpected never disappeared from Seth’s Continue Watching list on Netflix, and it wasn’t his affinity for low-budget movies. The idea of Skylar Stover being here in person seemed to have blown his mind. He couldn’t stop looking at her.
Maybe he was noticing Skylar’s breasts, barely contained by the stretchy fabric of her tank top. Maybe it was the waterfall of her hair, which somehow looked theatrical and glamorous no matter how she chose to wear it. It might have been her perfect thighs or sculpted calves or the generous-but-tiny curve of her butt. All she knew was Seth couldn’t stop staring at her and it was driving Natalie mad.
By now it was Sunday morning, somewhere in the dead zone between breakfast and lunch. Natalie was at the kitchen table, buzzing a little from a fresh taste of the limoncello Thomas had served after dinner last night. Ben and Brandon were playing The Game of Life with Skylar in the living room while Thomas read a paperback on the sofa. Seth was upstairs at the pool table. Natalie didn’t see anything wrong with a little day drinking, especially since it seemed to dampen the ringing in her ears, and anyway what else was there to do?
“I don’t understand this game,” said Ben. “The job I get and the amount of money I make is based on luck.”
“Real life is sometimes like that, too,” Skylar explained.
“But my dad says you have to work hard if you want a good life. That we have to get good grades in school if we want to make lots of money.” “Your dad is right about that.”
“But if I work hard, it’s not luck.”
“And she has a better job than Dad,” Brandon said, pointing at Skylar. “You make like a million dollars, right?”
Natalie looked up and watched Skylar fumble for an answer.
“She’s a beautiful actress,” Ben pointed out.
“Exactly,” said Brandon, brow furrowing with the gravity of philosophical insight. “And that’s not hard work. She was born beautiful.”
“Even in acting you have to work hard,” Skylar finally said.
“Really?” said Brandon. “I was in a school play last year, and that didn’t feel like work to me.”
“Imagine being in a play for fifteen hours a day. And having to tread water in a swimming pool for six hours while the director tries to film three lines of dialogue your costar can’t seem to get right.”
“That still doesn’t seem like work,” said Brandon. “That seems like fun. How do I get a job like that when I grow up?”
Skylar glanced up then and caught her staring. Natalie looked away, at the wall, at Thomas, who was also looking at her. Then she realized: They expected her to say something. Ben and Brandon were talking about school and careers as if the power would eventually come back on, as if the old way of life had simply been put on hold. But how could Natalie explain reality to the twins when she wasn’t ready to face it herself?
She went into the kitchen, where the bottle of limoncello stood, and quietly poured herself another small glass. Judging by its flavor, so light and sweet, the liqueur couldn’t be very strong. She poured one more little swallow and went back to her seat.
Until now she had ignored the magazines fanned across one end of the kitchen table, but as she tried to enjoy this fresh and heady rush of limoncello, Natalie began to suspect everyone knew she was drunk. And the sound in her ears had returned, louder than ever, clamoring like a school bell as she reached for the nearest magazine. Here was a smiling Tom Hanks. A feature on someone named Darren Aronofsky. A picture of Skylar Stover in a tight-fitting red dress, her hourglass figure nearly a cartoon. What did it feel like to live every day in a body like that? How wonderful must it be to reach for Skylar’s voluptuous figure among tangled bedsheets, to discover swells and curves of radiant skin, breath hot and humid, the soft touch of warm fingers—
“It’s so cool you’re a famous actress,” Brandon said. “I used to watch Jeffrey every night before bed.”
“Me, too,” said Ben. “You were our favorite.”
“You mean Electric Eric was your favorite. Music Madison was my favorite. Because, you know, she was so pretty.”
Brandon looked up at Skylar, blushing furiously. She smiled gleaming megawattage back at him.
“Thank you, Brandon.”